Tuesday, 3 October 2017

When we moved into
our house it had no name, only a confusing number – 1A.

Confusing because 1A
would normally come after no 1. Ours is
the first house in th road and therefore comes before no 1. And on the electoral register it comes after
all the other numbers, right at the other end of the road, so no one can ever find it.

So we gave it a
name. There was a medium sized (now huge) Weeping Willow
in the front garden and we planted another there and a Corkscrew Willow in the
back garden. And we called the house The
Willows.

What we did not know
was that in Chinese a ‘House of Willow’ is a brothel. I wonder what our Chinese neighbours thought
of the name? Perhaps we should have put up a notice like this one that I found on the Internet!

In traditional Chinese symbolism, a young girl is a 'Tender willow and fresh flower'.

And there are lots of traditions concerning the ability of the willow to repel ghosts and the giving of a willow branch to encourage someone to stay.

The Dictionary of
Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and Thought (Routledge) also
informs one that “The willow, much valued as firewood, is a symbol of
spring.As spring is the season of
erotic awakenings, the phrase ‘Willow
feelings and flower wishes’ means sexual desire;‘Looking
for flowers and buying willows’ means visiting a prostitute; ‘Flowers and willows by the wayside’ are
prostitutes; and ‘Sleeping among flowers
and reposing beneath willows’ is a term for visiting a brothel.

My Facebook friend, author Ann Chin, points out that
since we are not in China it doesn’t matter that we live at The Willows but I
still find it most amusing!

13 comments:

This is exactly the sort of thing I needed to refresh my mind and restore my sense of humor. The news over here has been just ghastly of late, and I find myself sinking under the depressive cloud. Now I find out you've named your house a brothel, and I am happy again!

I know what you mean about confusing house numbers! I live at No. 1, and next door is No. 3. But approaching our front doors from the road, No. 3 is first, and then No. 1, not the other way round as one would expect.House names are not so common in Germany as in England. Usually only houses that are pensions, B&Bs and so on have a name, often after the female head of household.

My parents' house in the countryside had a name (given it by my grandfather who built it) and in that area the house names are also the address (while the road leading to those houses has no name!) In towns, it is rare for houses to have a name, at least not used in the address. I once lived in a Willow Street (or the Swedish equivalent). It was a short cross-street near the river and at one end of it there was a large willow tree leaning out over the river. As it wasn't in China, never any trouble with the name!!! When I revisited many years later, the old tree was no longer there, though. So people who come there now might wonder about the name, because no other streets in the area has tree names.

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Thanks for stopping by! Would you like a cup of tea or coffee? And please, sit for a spell. If you enjoy my posts, please feel free to follow me or subscribe to my blog. This is a word verification free, family friendly blog, so everything I share here is for all ages. I am a happily married man in my late sixties who lives on the Wirral peninsula, near Liverpool, in the UK.

I'm a blogger - and nowadays that seems to be my main occupation. Rambles from My Chair is my main blog. I’m a retired local government executive - now studying how to survive a neurological disorder that gives me various problems but, hopefully, a whole new outlook on life and an increased sense of humour and perspective. There is a saying in Sweden "man måste vara frisk för att orka vara sjuk" ~ "you have to be well to cope with being ill"....

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